I seem to want more coffee than ever,
now that I’ve kicked the habit —
have eliminated caffeine from my life…
I feel better, less anxious,
but I miss the psychological routine,
the behavior, the smell, the act,
the placebo…
I miss the sound of the machine
and going out of my way to find
it when I wasn’t home…
I used to get a real kick out of forcing
my loved ones to stop everything
they were doing when they
were spending time with me to find a cup
for the sole reason of satisfying my craving,
in order to fulfill what they had come
to perceive was an essential aspect of
my persona — but it’s okay…
personas change, and attitudes and dispositions
can crumble to dust in the right sort of wind —
it’s just a weather forecast, this notion of self…
personalities aren’t as stable as we
so desperately want them to be,
and to really live and move forward
we have to accept the idea of behaving differently,
of adapting to necessary conditions, and from
time to time, we should appreciate
that giving up something with conscious intent
is a way to remind ourselves
that we are free
Garbage Notes:
I wrote this back in January when I was still kind of struggling with the idea of not drinking coffee anymore. I had stopped drinking it back in November, and it wasn’t easy.
Coffee’s always been a big part of my life since, I don’t know—probably since I was 19. I remember it becoming a habit back in college and it only got worse as I went on to graduate school and beyond.
I loved it. I depended on it. People would even joke that it had become part of my personality. And I had gotten well into my adulthood without ever even questioning it.
But personality is not identity. And peripheral things—habits, routines, dietary choices, modes of behavior—these aren’t static things. We can always change. And it was time to see if I could live life without being constantly caffeinated.
The withdrawal symptoms were awful. And they lasted much longer than I thought they would. Even a month later I was still feeling weird, like my body still could not adjust to a reality without coffee.
Eventually, though, things settled down and I started to feel better. I still get cravings. Even a slight whiff of it in a cafe drives me insane in an intoxicating sort of way. When people drink it around me, I want to steal a sip. Stuff like coffee flavored candy or ice cream—I’ll have it sometimes, but it feels like a tease.
I sometimes drink tea now. Chai or matcha or whatever alternatives are out there, just to have a little bit of caffeine from time to time. Enough to feel some kind of boost without falling back into the habit. But it's ten months later, and I still haven’t gone back. Someday, maybe. But at least it’s good to know I could stop if I wanted to.
Franco Amati 2023
“it’s just a weather forecast, this notion of self” - - LOVE
That was a great poem!
I love how your connected giving up coffee to how our personality aren’t as fixed as we sometimes think.